unconventional grit for a mindful life

Tag Archives: canning

This year, I made all my Christmas gifts. It was something that sounded romantic at first, but man oh man was I busting my ass the last couple weeks, bagging tea, baking, tasting beers, and packing everything up.

We are trying to get away from wrapping paper, so this year I upcycled most of my packaging material. I took a big stack of boxes from a Dollar General, and cut them down to make little open top boxes. I wrapped these using Trader Joe’s holiday brown grocery bags, and accented using homemade name tags and gathered pine cones. The rest of the packaging material was bought cheap at the dollar store.

As you can see, our little gift baskets included: homebrewed beer, homemade candy (buckeyes!), pizzelle (Italian cookies I made using my late grandpa’s pizzelle press), tea tins with homegrown tea and tea cookies, and finally a jam or jelly. We made habanero pepper jelly using our own habaneros; apple butter using north Georgia mountain apples; and blackberry lavender jam using all the wild blackberries we foraged plus homegrown lavender.

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about me – christine elise

i'm a mid-twenties, vegetarian barefoot mountain mama running a mini-homestead in the southern appalachians. i brew beer, practice yoga, study fungi, grow food, and pet cats. my dream is to retire by age 40 and run a homestead in the mountains. i save money aggressively through anti-consumerism, frugality, self-provisioning, and mindfulness.